Characters depicting gay partners and sex workers in school textbook have raised heated debates in the conservative country.
UNCHAPERONED teens, gay partners and sex workers – fictional characters in a new curriculum for Myanmar schools are causing a real-world tussle over morality in a deeply conservative nation.
In Myanmar, sex out of wedlock is illegal, teenage dating is frowned upon by censorious elders and same-sex relations are still officially illegal.
Yet sex education is urgently needed, say advocates.
Nearly 8,000 died in 2018 from AIDS-related diseases, the country has the second highest maternal death rate in Asia after Afghanistan and women’s rights group IPAS estimates around a quarter of a million unsafe abortions are undertaken every year.
Teenagers have only been taught sex education since 2016, when the new government of Aung San Suu Kyi vowed to overhaul the country’s outdated curriculum.
But embarrassed teachers often sideline the subject.
A new textbook for the coming academic year included scenarios such as teenagers feeling intimate over homework and a customer at a karaoke bar offering a waitress money for sex.
Conservatives in the Buddhistmajority country are outraged.
“Is this a school textbook or a porno?” challenged Facebook user Aung Pho Min, triggering an online debate that snowballed.
Monk Ashin Agga Dhama, once a member of the now banned hardline Buddhist group MaBaTha, waded in, branding the book “filth” that flew against the country’s values.
After “hearing the public’s voice”, the government announced it would review the curriculum – so, for now, all sex education is shelved.
Tensions between conservatives and those open to new ideas have increased since the country started transitioning to democracy in 2010, said Rosalie Metro from the University of MissouriColumbia.
The curriculum has always been a place where “ideological struggle” plays out, added Metro, who has studied education in Myanmar for 20 years. — AFP